HLAAKC would like to thank steering committee member Terri Shirley for her efforts to bring more captioning options to local movie theaters.  Terri recently worked with AMC to bring a captioned movie of her choice to AMC Studio 30 and we hope you are as encouraged by her efforts as we are. Terri’s experience is a great example that with respect and a little persistence, advocacy can be successful for all of us!

During my recent trip to California, I had the opportunity to see this delightful movie called Moonrise Kingdom. The film is about two misfit 12-year-olds lovers who run away from their charming New England town, which has far-reaching affects on their little community. This romantic, dramatic comedy kept me chuckling throughout the entire movie. The full house audience gave it a standing ovation at the end.  I looked forward to watching it when I got back home to Kansas City with my family and friends.

The theater in California had CaptiView and other listening devices like our KC movie theaters do. I assumed because our local theaters used the same technology that I would be able to see this captioned in KC also. To my surprise, the movie was not captioned at any of our local theaters.

Disappointed, I spent a week contacting area theaters, trying to find one that would caption this movie. The manager of AMC Studio 30 agreed to have Moonrise Kingdom captioned by Friday, July 6.  This was not as simple as it sounds as he explained that the week of Friday, June 22, Studio 30 began a process of upgrading much of the networking to their projection systems. This upgrade is not yet complete and had resulted in the reduced ability to offer more movies captioned. At present, Studio 30 has approximately nine screens that are CaptiView-enabled. When the upgrade is complete, Studio 30 will return to having nearly every one of their 30 screens capable of supporting closed captions. Even with the theater in the middle of these upgrades, the AMC 30 manager was able to modify their movie schedules to provide Moonrise Kingdom captioned for the Kansas City community.

I plan to see this movie and invite you to join me in showing AMC 30 that their efforts are needed and appreciated. The movie is rated PG-13 and was given 8.3 stars on IMDb. If you are in need of using captioning or listening devices and are not familiar with how to use them, please go to the customer service counter.  Allow at least 15-30 minutes to get settled in with the device.  We encourage you to invite your hearing family and friends so they can understand the captioning will not interfere with enjoying the movie.

Thanks so much for your support!